


Open Window

by vinnie2757



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Developing Relationship, F/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Build, also no one likes him, i'll add more tags as it comes up, laura has a boyfriend and he's not clint so he's going to be gone soon, laura is the best team mom, so he doesnt stand a chance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4885699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stares at her, and she stares back.<br/>‘So my name’s Clint,’ he says, to break the silence. ‘Nice to meet you, I think? I’m pretty sure you should call someone, though. Um, no offence, but you’re kind of. Freaking me out a bit.’<br/>Laura nods.<br/>‘I’m freaking myself out,’ she assures him, and throws the towel at him. ‘Dry off, I’m going to go – make cocoa, and – um – I’m gonna go and take five, okay?’</p><p>[The one where Clint breaks into Laura's apartment, and it goes about as well as you'd expect.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The One Where Clint Breaks In

**Author's Note:**

> Just a silly little au to fill a need in my soul lmao.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

The storm’s been raging for almost two whole days now, a lashing rain that leaves your skin stinging. Laura gets home from work late after staying behind to finish paperwork, though she admits that they probably would have gotten the work done faster if they hadn’t put their feet up on their desks and gossiped the entire time. Nat had insisted she take a cab because it was dark and wet and Nat could take care of herself, but she – like the boys, and Laura thinks she should probably be used to this by now – hated Laura being out alone, especially when it was dark and wet. So Laura had taken the cab, because arguing with Nat was like arguing with a brick wall, and Nat was not above calling Bucky and having him yell incoherently down the phone in increasingly higher pitches.

In the time it took her to get from the kerb to her door, she was soaked through, and more miserable than she had been in the time it took her to get from the overhang outside the main doors to the cab.

Grumbling to herself, she goes to take a nice long bath with a (big) glass of wine and just de-stress from all the hectic shuffling and paper-pushing that had been going on. Nat often jokes that getting through work is only manageable if you pretended you were a super secret government agent helping save the world. Laura supposes that it’s a Russian thing. But sometimes, she thinks Nat is onto something. It’s better than facing the reality that they’re both working for a Stark Industries subsidiary, anyway. At least Tony hadn’t been down in R&D today, making a nuisance of himself. No one gets any work done those days, because he’s calling all the girls down to show things off, and Laura is sure he calls her and Nat more than anyone else. It’s probably because they give him even more shit than Miss Potts does.

Lucky comes to greet her while she’s in the bath, and sits at her side with his head on the tub, tail wagging any time she scratches behind his ears. The rain makes him sleepy, and he never wants to do anything other than cover her sheets in dog hair when it’s raining. Dog hair aside, he’s a lot like Bucky, and Laura supposes that’s why she likes the daft Lab so much, why he’s such a perfect fit in the group.

‘Good dog,’ she hums, because if nothing else, Lucky is a constant presence in her apartment on quiet nights.

He huffs, and twists to lick her hand.

After her bath, she goes to the kitchen, puts some fresh food down for Lucky, heats up last night’s leftovers and eats in front of the TV. She sits there quietly, watching whatever late night comedy show is on, leaving the blinds open to use the streetlight outside as her light source once the TV’s off. Lucky lies at her feet before following her back to bed, falling asleep long before she does, his foot kicking against the sheets as he chases rabbits.

When she does fall asleep, she’s only asleep for maybe two hours before she’s woken by something bumping into the coffee table. Lying in bed, she thinks that maybe something’s just fallen over, a cup left too close to the edge of the table, or something, and the apartment below is messing around. But then the something curses quietly – loudly, too loudly for the quiet of the middle of the night – and she considers reaching for her phone and texting – texting – who would she even text? Nat would be there as soon as she could, but Nat lived the other end of Manhattan. Bucky and Steve were in Brooklyn, the selfish assholes, and Sam’s over at Staten Island so that’s him out of the question. She could text any of them, but would they get here before she was murdered in her bed waiting for them?

Not that it matters, because her hand brushes the space on her bedside table where her phone usually sits, and then she realises with a bit lip and mouthed curse that it’s still in her bag, by the door, where she’d left it.

Shit, shit, _shit_.

Lucky is still fast asleep next to her, rolled over, and she knows that Labradors are not actually very good guard dogs, but this is beyond a joke. She’s going to die and her dog is _snoring_. She gives him a quick rub, but he doesn’t respond except to wag his tail and roll onto his back, which is _useless_.

It takes her a thick swallow and a mental pep-talk before she rolls out of bed as quietly as she can, reaching under her bed for the baseball bat Sam and Steve had bullied her into putting there when she first moved in. She’s never needed it. She’ll thank them in the morning, if she survives, and grips it in both hands, thanking God she sleeps with her bedroom door open.

Leaning around the corner for a second, she scans the lounge area and presses herself flat against the door again. Swallowing, she looks again, longer this time, because the figure had been faced away. She’s never had a break-in before, but this neighbourhood is – well, she’d thought it was okay, even if Nat and Sam had exchanged looks and Bucky had had to confiscate Steve’s phone before he started trying to find the crime reports for the area.

God, they could have said something!

It’s a tall figure, doubled over, looking in the cabinets, and she draws a slow, quiet breath as she pushes up onto her toes and creeps forward, bat at the ready. She won’t – she won’t swing _hard_ – just hard enough. A little tap. She doesn’t want to kill him. Just. Knock him out. Maybe she should aim for the legs. God, but she was awful at sports in school, never able to hit the ball.

At least the target’s pretty big, human-sized, not hard to miss it.

She draws the bat back as the figure straightens, and swings.

The figure turns, catches the bat an inch or so from its head, and she feels herself gaping. Shit, shit, shit, she’s going to die. That’s it, she’s dead, tell her idiot friends she loves them.

‘Don’t do that,’ the figure says, in a voice that makes her knees knock because what the _hell_ is a voice that cute doing breaking into her apartment in the middle of the night? ‘I like my face where it is.’

‘Don’t break into other people’s apartments, then,’ she bites, and Steve would be proud of her, probably. ‘Then you won’t almost lose your face. Besides, I was aiming for the back of your head. It’s your own fault for turning around.’

He tugs at the bat and she’s too surprised to keep her grip on it, and she makes a noise in the back of her throat when he flips it in his hand to hold it the right way round.

‘Aww, come on, I’m not gonna brain you,’ he says, and tosses it onto the couch. As he turns, the streetlight catches his face, and casts half of it into relief.

A skinny man, a boy, really, he can’t be very old, unshaven, his wet hair plastered to his face. Underfed, exhausted. Rainwater drips off his nose and chin. She imagines, in that second she gets to look at him, that he’s probably homeless.

‘You know,’ she says, can’t help herself, ‘you can wait out the night here, if you want. It’s supposed to be raining all night, so you might as well get a little dried off? I guess?’

He turns to her, eyes wide, and they look very blue for how in shadow he is.

‘I’m sorry?’ he asks, and his voice pitches a little higher at that, squeakier. ‘I’m trying to burgle you?’

‘I know,’ she says, ‘but you’re soaked through, and it’s storming out there, and you’re just – I mean, if you wanna go back out there that’s – no, no you’re right, you’re right, you should go. Go on, off you go.’

She shoves at his chest, back towards the window he must have come through – and she’d forgotten that she had the fire escape there, thank God nobody used it! – and pauses. His chest, while looking rake thin in the shadows from the streetlight, is solid muscle, and he’s wearing a thin T-shirt, she can tell. It’s soaked through, clinging to his skin, and she lingers, hands flat against his heart and his abs, able to feel the erratic beat, before she abruptly jerks back.

‘Go on,’ she repeats, biting at her lips, trying to stand tall, but he’s gotta be as tall as Sam and Bucky, surely, and she has to crack her neck to look at them, and it’s _ridiculous_.

Even though he’s sopping wet, he’s intimidating. He’s tall and strong and fast and she has no idea what he really looks like, because his back’s to the window, and he didn’t even budge when she shoved.

‘Go on, go.’

He stares at her, head tilting in confusion.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘Do you need to call someone? Are you going into shock?’

She takes a deep breath.

‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘It’s just. This is the first time I’ve been burgled. It’s not how I imagined it going. I’m gonna put the light on, okay? I need cocoa, would you like cocoa? I’m going to make you cocoa, okay? And get you a towel, ‘cause you’re wet, and you’re probably dripping on the floor.’

She turns to leave, and then looks back at him.

‘Don’t steal my stuff,’ she says, wags a finger at him.

She can feel his eyes on her back as she heads to the kitchen, flicking the light on. In the kitchen, out of the way of the lounge, she takes a moment to tell herself that this is stupid. She’s going to be dead by morning because she’s letting some burglar stay in her house overnight during a storm and no one knows. Could she get to her phone and let her friends know? Maybe.

She pulls a pan out of the cupboard, and the milk from the fridge, puts it on to boil as she goes to get a towel from the bathroom, flicking the main light on as she comes back. Now that it’s on, she can see the wet patch the burglar’s leaving on the floor, water still dripping from him, and it’s so wet out there, but he must have been out in it all day to be this wet, and he’s going to get _ill_ if he stays that wet much longer. But Christ.

Christ, he’s _handsome_. He has no right to be attractive. Bucky is attractive, pretty even, even after his tour, and the whole arm thing, and he still wakes screaming so he’s always looking rough these days, but he’s still pretty, and Sam and Steve are handsome too, in different ways. But this guy, fuck her. Just fuck her life, really.

‘Okay,’ she says, clutching the towel a little tighter than before. ‘Okay, if I’m going to die at the hands of a handsome man, I’m going to have to cut your hair first, okay? I can’t be killed by a handsome man with hair like that, that’s so bad, honey. That’s _awful_. Have you been to a barber recently? Because I’d sue them if that’s what they did to your hair.’

He stares at her, and she stares back.

‘So my name’s Clint,’ he says, to break the silence. ‘Nice to meet you, I think? I’m pretty sure you should call someone, though. Um, no offence, but you’re kind of. Freaking me out a bit.’

Laura nods.

‘I’m freaking myself out,’ she assures him, and throws the towel at him. ‘Dry off, I’m going to go – make cocoa, and – um – I’m gonna go and take five, okay?’

Off she goes back to the kitchen, and she considers sticking her head in the milk. It would be more dignified, probably.

‘Okay,’ she tells herself, putting her hands on her hips and watching the milk begin to bubble. ‘I can handle this. If I can handle Bucky at one in the morning, I can handle this.’

The routine of making cocoa calms her down, and by the time she’s returning to her burglar – friend? – whose name is Clint, she’s calm.

‘Hi,’ she says, smiles. ‘I’m sorry about all that. Here’s cocoa.’

She extends the mug to him, and his hand brushes hers when he takes it. His fingers are cold.

‘God, you’re freezing,’ she says, and puts her mug on the coffee table, ‘here, wrap yourself up in this.’

She tugs him to the couch, and he laughs, startled, steadies the mug as she flaps open the blanket on the couch, pulls it over his shoulders. It brings them a little close, and Laura has to draw another breath, because now that he’s towelled off as much as he could, his hair’s a tangled bird’s nest, and she finds her fingers itch to rub through it, tidy it up. She’ll definitely cut it before she lets him go. Bucky likes the way she cuts his hair, after all, so she can cut Clint’s too, right? A faux hawk would suit him, she thinks, not close-cropped, but tidy.

‘Thanks,’ he whispers, and she swallows, meets his eyes, and that’s a mistake.

‘Your problem,’ she says, and when he laughs, she flushes red. ‘No problem! You’re welcome! Oh, _God_.’

He’s still laughing, and he holds the blanket shut around his shoulders with one hand, holding his mug with the other. It looks ridiculous with his soaked jeans and battered – are those _purple_? – trainers, but his face is cute, and he’s laughing. It’s actually a nice laugh. Adorable, even.

Oh, _God_.

‘This is not how I imagined this night was going to go,’ Clint says, charitable, and perches himself on the edge of the couch. ‘The window was unlocked, and I figured it’d be a quick in and out, and then you woke up, and ha-ha, well.’

‘I could go back to bed if you prefer,’ she says, and then wonders if that sounds as much like a proposition as she thinks it does. ‘But then, it wouldn’t be much of a quick in and out any more.’

Shut up, Laura. Just shut up. Stop right there. Not another word.

‘Well, no,’ Clint says, with what she will (years and years later) say is a giggle, ‘you’ve seen my face now, if I steal anything, you’ll be able to report me.’

 If she was Nat, she’d have a quip already on her tongue. She’d have several to choose from.

But she’s not Nat, and what she says instead is, ‘if you don’t steal anything, I won’t have to report you.’

He looks peculiarly startled by this, mouth quirking in a way that makes her want to – absolutely not, Laura, do not finish that thought.

‘Oh,’ he says, ‘well, I suppose not.’

They lapse into a silence then, sipping at their cocoa, and it’s odd, how comfortable the silence is, Laura in her vest-and-shorts, Clint in his blanket and soaked clothes. They don’t, now that Laura’s run her mouth, need to say a word.

‘I’ve got some, um, men’s clothes,’ she says, ‘if you wanted to put the ones you’re wearing over the radiator. They should be dry in the morning.’

Clint goes sheet white.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘Well, if you stay in wet clothes, they’ll, um, they’ll make you sick, right?’

He swallows, stares at the mug in his hands.

‘I suppose so,’ he mumbles, and she feels the air temperature drop several degrees.

Shivering, she gets up. ‘They’re only a friend’s, but he won’t mind, he’s about your size. All you boys, you’re all so tall, what do your mommas feed you, eh?’

Clint opens his mouth, but his jaw clacks shut, and she feels like she’s hit a nerve. Burning her mouth with a large gulp of cocoa that makes her throat itch, she sets her mug down and gets up, excusing herself to get the clothes.

Sam won’t mind, she tells herself. They all keep a spare outfit at each other’s places, in case they get caught out by the weather, or they’re drunk, or whatever. Sam won’t mind her lending his clothes out, so long as she launders them after. He doesn’t need to know.

 She finds the carrier bag with Sam’s clothes in the bottom of her closet next to the bag with Bucky and Steve’s spare clothes (because they come as a package, and if you get one, the other is not far behind), and Nat’s clothes are hung up on a hanger above them. Snagging the bag, she pauses to grab her dressing gown, because it’s cold, and she feels exposed, and she doesn’t need a reason to cover up around a stranger, okay? Okay. So covered up, bag in hand, she heads out to Clint, who’s still perched on the edge of the couch, looking like he hasn’t moved.

‘If you, you know, you can take a shower, if you want,’ she offers, ‘to warm up again. I was only out in the rain for a few minutes, but I took a bath as soon as I got home.’

She misses the way his eyes track down her body, because she’s too busy checking the labels on Sam’s clothes, making sure they are the size she’s guessed Clint at. She’s sure they’re fine, and she’s not looking for a reason to avoid meeting his gaze or anything, of course not.

‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ Clint asks then, blurts it out, and it rings too loud in the silence of the apartment.

Laura flushes, looks at anything not him.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You just. You don’t seem. Bad. I mean, you’re not _great_ , are you? You broke in. But you’re not _bad_. You can be a good person and do bad things.’

Clint mouths, ‘oh,’ and then looks a little flummoxed, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Laura hesitates, and then crosses the space between them, runs her hand through his hair, combs it back off his face.

‘Definitely cutting your hair,’ she teases, ‘the boyband thing doesn’t work for you. Go shower, Clint, and put your clothes on the radiator. Are you hungry? I’ll make food, if you are.’

He jerks out of her touch, to his feet, and the T-shirt is drying like a second skin. There are goosebumps still on his arms, and why was he without a coat in this weather? Was he _trying_ to get ill?

She asks him.

She asks, ‘are you _trying_ to get ill?’

‘No,’ he says, immediately. ‘No, I’m just – I, uh. I got into a fight, my coat got wrecked, so I dumped it.’

‘I suppose you’ll steal another one?’ she asks, and surprises herself that there’s no judgement.

He looks a little too guilty.

‘Probably,’ he admits.

‘Have a shower, Clint, please. Consider it stealing my water and toiletries. Not like you can give shower gel back, after all.’

It comes out a little heavier than she meant it to, but she shrugs, because what else can she do?

He looks at her, and she offers him a smile, sadder and quieter, and she tugs her robe tighter around her.

‘I – you’re gonna insist, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah. Better off not fighting it, honey. Just go shower. If you want to go then, I won’t fight you, but I can’t let you wear these clothes, I’m sorry.’

Clint wavers, and then finally nods. ‘Alright,’ he says, ‘alright. This is the weirdest night of my life, I hope you know.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ she smiles, lighter this time.

He gets to the door of the bathroom, and then pauses, turns back.

‘I don’t know your name,’ he says.

‘Laura,’ she replies.

‘Laura,’ he murmurs to himself, and she catches the edge of a smile as he turns back to enter the bathroom and shut the door.

A minute later, she hears the water turn on, and she collapses on the couch, buries her head in her hands.

‘Fuck me,’ she breathes, and hauls herself upright to get her bag.

Fishing her phone out, she stares at the group chat before closing it and opening up a text to Nat. She closes it, opens one to Sam, and closes that. She can’t tell Steve or Bucky; she can’t have either of them out here in the middle of the night in this weather, not with Steve’s health and Bucky’s arm, not that Bucky needs both hands to kill a man, not when Steve’ll hold him down for him.

In the end, she doesn’t text anyone.

She checks the weather app; it says it’s going to be raining for a while yet, and she takes a deep breath. Getting to her feet, listening to the shower, finding herself smiling when she hears the bump of what she’ll wager is Clint’s elbow against the wall, she goes to the coat rack opposite her front door and looks at the coats there. Nat’s left her leather jacket, the way she always leaves her leather jacket, and the boys have all left hooded sweatshirts, and on its own is Tim’s jacket. It’s one of those military surplus ones, with pin badges for punk bands and anarchy and god knows what all over the breast.

Not without a little guilt, she unpins all of the badges, and puts them on the counter.

‘Sorry, Tim,’ she says, but she doesn’t feel all that sorry, actually.

Tim’s kind of a jerk.

The water shuts off, and she pats the pockets down, leans in to check how the jacket smells, and deems it alright. A moment or two later, the bathroom door opens.

‘Um, Laura?’

‘Yes?’

Clint’s wet through, but steaming a little, and she smiles, glad to see him warm. He’s also only got one of her orange towels wrapped around his waist, but that’s neither here nor there. She’s not looking at his chest. Nope. Not at all. Not in the least.

He has freckles across his shoulders.

‘I think – I think I’m going to stay the night,’ he says, ‘if that’s alright with you.’

She grins, and scoops Sam’s bag up off the table.

‘Good,’ she says, and goes to hand it over. ‘Put your stuff on the radiator, and I’ll make you something to eat. I think I’ve got a frozen pizza?’

Clint visibly perks up. ‘What kind?’ he asks.

‘I’ll have to look. Meaty, probably. Pepperoni, maybe?’

‘That sounds good,’ he says, and his smile is beautifully honest.

‘It’s a date,’ she says, and then groans. ‘Oh my God! No, shut up, stop laughing, put some clothes on!’

She shoves at his face, and he disappears back into the bathroom. She can still hear him laughing when she opens the freezer to find his damn pizza.

* * *

When the sun comes up and Laura’s alarm beeps from her bedroom, it's still raining. Lucky is asleep at their feet, his head on Clint’s toes, where he’s been since they settled down to spend the last few hours talking. Clint and Laura both look at the rain still lashing at the window before sighing.

'I don't want to work in this weather. I wanna make like Lucky, and just sleep through uninteresting days like these.'

It’s not entirely a lie; rainy weekends are usually spent asleep if she’s not with her friends. She could sleep through today purely for how tired she is. Then again, if she hadn't woken up, Clint would have made off with most of valuable things she owned, and she was not about that at all.

Clint ruffles his hair – Laura had cut it, after he'd eaten, down to an inch of so, with a little extra on top, and the faux-hawk suited him more than the ear-length boyband mop had – and frowns.

'Are you going to be alright?' he asks. 'You didn't sleep all night.'

Laura smiles, 'I'm fine, honey. It's all paperwork at the office, and I don't have to think too hard about it.'

He seems reluctant, but nods a little, accepts that she knows her job.

'Well, okay. But make sure you catch up on sleep tonight.'

Clint changes back into his clothes while Laura makes breakfast, and they sit at the bar eating in peaceful quiet.

'I should go,' Clint says as he fiddles with his cutlery, and Laura nods.

'I guess so,' she mumbles, stirring her cereal without eating it.

They linger for a few moments, watching each other from under their eyelashes, but then Laura jerks to her feet and goes to get Tim's jacket.

'I was kind of seeing this guy,' she says, ‘and he left his jacket as an excuse to see me again, but I'd rather not. Do me a favour?'

Clint looks at her.

'You're giving me your boyfriend's jacket?'

'He wishes he was my boyfriend. I just – take the jacket, Clint. I don’t want you to get sick because you weren’t wearing at least _something_ on your arms.’

Laura nods, sure of her decision, and shoves it at him until he takes it.

The jacket suits him far more than it ever did Tim, fitting snug across his shoulders and offsetting the tan of his skin and sand of his hair perfectly.

'Thank you,' he says, 'I think.'

Laura tries not to eye him up.

'Your problem,' she teases, and he laughs that cute laugh again.

It’s only after he’s gone – out of the fire escape the way he came in, leaving no trace of himself beyond the rumpled blanket on the couch – that Laura realises he had hearing aids.

* * *

The first words out of Nat’s mouth when Laura walks into the office are, ‘you look like absolute shit.’

Laura, who had dozed off in the cab on the way in, feels like absolute shit, but she doesn’t give Nat the dignity of saying it out loud, which is what Nat always wants. They both know she’s exhausted, but if it’s not said out loud, it’s not real.

And so Laura sits her ass in her chair, dumps her bag under her desk, and says, ‘you smell like it.’

Nat just smiles, and retreats behind her computer. After a minute or so, she asks if Tim came over. There’s a slight bite to the way she says his name, and Laura stiffens.

‘No,’ she says, ‘no, I just couldn’t sleep, is all. Lucky wouldn’t settle.’

Nat’s eyes appear over the top of her monitor, disbelieving.

‘Not like him,’ she says, and Laura shrugs, pulls her cardigan off and drapes it over the back of her chair, flicking her monitor on.

‘I think he wanted to go for a walk, but I’m not walking him in this weather when I was already late home. Which, by the way, I am not doing again.’

Nat’s eyebrow lifts, and Laura lifts hers in return.

‘Better do some work then, hadn’t you, Harcourt?’ Nat hums, as though she’s not the reason they had to stay behind last night.

‘Speak for yourself, _Rushman_.’

‘That was one time! One time!’

Laughing, Laura taps in her password, and gets to work.

* * *

At lunch, the group chat pings with a new message. The girls reach for their phones, and find that Steve is demanding their presence at the Roadhouse for drinks.

Bucky is quick to join the conversation with a flurry of auto-corrected messages proclaiming that under no circumstances are they to encourage Steven to drink, as Steven has been in bed for most of the day with a migraine and therefore cannot be allowed out in the immediate vicinity of alcohol.

> **Nat** : We’ll be there.

Laura looks at Nat, who just smiles to herself and returns to her half-eaten pasta.

Sam adds that he’ll be late, since he’s the other side of town at the VA, but buy him a beer anyway.

> **Bucky** : I hate all of you.

The next half-hour is spent watching Nat and Bucky bat insults back and forth at an increasingly auto-corrected velocity, and in the end the word banana has been said so often it’s lost all meaning.

Laura shoves a mouthful of cafeteria premade sandwich into her mouth – that had caused drama in and of itself, because Laura never bought lunch unless they were going out for it, and Nat had been eyeballing her the entire time they stood in the queue – and feels exhaustion tug at her bones. Now that Nat’s said they’ll be there, Laura can’t back out, but she doesn’t feel up to the Roadhouse tonight, as much as she loves going out with the gang. God, she’s tired.

She finds herself thinking about Clint, wondering what he did after leaving, whether he found somewhere dry to hole up and wait the rain out. It’s mostly blown over now, but it’s still sporadically drizzling. She hopes he’s kept the jacket. He needs to stay warm.

Nat bursts out laughing, and Laura swallows her mouthful of sandwich, realising she’d zoned out. She checks her phone. Bucky’s newest text should be going viral in his perfect awfulness.

‘You dork,’ she says, and a message from Nat pops up informing Bucky that Laura just called him a dork.

‘You’re awful,’ Laura tells her, and Nat just smiles.

* * *

Laura is proud of herself for making it to eight pm, honestly. She’s only a little more exhausted than she was at eight am, having suffered a long day of paper-pushing and boring staff pep-talks from their utterly _useless_ team leader. Whoever thought Jasper was a good team leader needs a wedgie or something equally childish and painful. She misses Phil; Phil was a great team leader.

 Still, they get through work, and then Nat is dragging her back to her place in Harlem to get ready for the night out.

‘I don’t really want to dress up,’ Laura says, flopping on Nat’s couch and knowing it’s a mistake. Nat’s couch is terribly comfortable, an old, overstuffed ugly thing that is at such odds to her expensive, impossibly sharp style.

‘You need to find someone better than _Tim_ ,’ Nat calls from the bedroom, and pads back in her underwear, two dresses in her hand. ‘Which one?’

‘Black one,’ Laura says with a glance. ‘Always wear black in the Roadhouse, Nat, you know this.’

Nat eyeballs the purple one, and then tosses it at Laura. ‘You wear the colour then.’

‘I told you,’ Laura says, but doesn’t remove the dress from her face. ‘I wanna go in my _uggs_.’

‘You wear uggs tonight and I will let Bucky set them on fire, you know how much he hates them.’

‘Steve loves them,’ Laura says, and finds her phone to text and ask.

> **Steve** : Of course I love your uggs. They’re the exact level of hipster trash you know I appreciate.

Bucky is immediately at the ready with an insult about Steve’s glasses that goes completely ignored. Laura finally pulls the dress from her face.

‘I don’t wanna,’ she whines, and kicks her feet in the air like the big baby she is.

Nat is wriggling into her dress, and from inside it, she says, ‘don’t kick your feet like a big baby, Laura. Put the dress on.’

Laura continues to make baby noises, but puts the dress on anyway.

* * *

After making a pit-stop at Laura’s apartment to feed Lucky and for Laura to redo her makeup, they head down to the Roadhouse. Laura is dead on her feet, and opts for flats, ignoring Nat’s huffing.

‘I am not wearing heels tonight,’ Laura snorts. ‘I’ll break my ankles, and who’ll save you from Tony then?’

‘I think you mean _I’ll_ be saving _you_ ,’ Nat replies, but lets Laura put her flats on anyway before dragging her out of the door.

Laura makes it through three breezers before she falls asleep on Sam’s shoulder.

Sam is understandably quite startled by this development, but obligingly moves to tuck his arm around her and rubs her shoulder. She huffs out a breath and settles. It says something for how tired she is that she can fall asleep in a busy bar, and Sam looks at Nat over Laura’s head.

‘What?’ he asks.

Nat shrugs around her beer. ‘She didn’t sleep last night. Lucky wouldn’t settle, she says.’

The boys frown.

‘Not like him,’ Bucky says.

‘Lucky always settles,’ Steve adds, and rubs his chin. ‘Especially when it’s raining. That’s strange.’

Nat hums, and downs the last of her drink. ‘I’d better get her home, she’ll be awful at work tomorrow if I don’t get her in bed. She’ll feel guilty enough.’

Sam nods. ‘Let me drive you,’ he says, ‘it’ll be easier to get her home that way.’

He scoops her up, and she stirs, shoves at him.

‘I’m awake,’ she says, and Sam snorts, gets her out from the booth before setting her down. ‘Come on then.’

She yawns, and leans on him as she glances back at Steve and Bucky, who are pulling into their jackets.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘don’t stop the evening ‘cause of me.’

‘We aren’t,’ Steve assures her, and steps around the booth to hug her, not-at-all-subtle in his attempts to pat her down, as if expecting to find some physical malady. ‘These three are being boring anyway, no one wants to party.’

She squints at him. He smiles, winningly, and she knocks their foreheads together, affectionate, before he passes her back to Sam. She pretends she doesn’t need supporting, but is fairly certain she’s not going to stay on her feet unaided.

She falls asleep in Sam’s car, and it takes an effort to get her to wake up enough to get her in the elevator and across the hall to her apartment. Nat changes her into her pyjamas with minimal difficulty, gives her face a cursory scrub with a baby wipe to get the worst of the makeup off, and leaves her in bed with Lucky at her side.

‘I don’t believe you didn’t settle,’ Nat tells him, giving him a good scratch behind his ear. ‘You’re not bad like that.’

She stays for a while, tidies up a little, and finds more cutlery and dishes in the dishwasher than there should have been. Putting her hands on her hips, she frowns at it.

‘You filthy stinkin’ _liar_ , Laura Harcourt,’ she says to herself, and rifles in her bag for her phone.

A few taps later, the boys have a message that reads, T I M in emoji.

A string of curses immediately gets returned via Bucky. Steve and Sam are a little more dignified about their frustration, but understand why Laura would lie about it. They hate Tim with a passion, and while Laura isn’t a pushover, she won’t kick him out of her life in case she hurts his feelings. Which is stupid. But of course Laura would lie about having Tim over, because they’d give her an earful, and she’s not a fan.

Laura’s going to be miserable in the morning, so Nat pads back to her bedroom to kiss her forehead goodnight – a gesture reserved solely for Laura, because she isn’t kissing the boys when she doesn’t know where they’ve been, but Laura is always clean and smells nice and is generally very nice all around – and takes her and her beeping phone outside and back to her Harlem apartment.

By the end of the week, Laura’s caught up on her sleep, and mostly forgotten the exhaustion of staying up all night. She thinks about Clint a few times, thinks about how he’s been since he left, hopes he’s been okay. She doesn’t think about his shoulder freckles or his soft laughter or the way he smiled with his eyes more than he did his mouth. Nope, not at all.

She doesn’t think about how he was the first boy not her boys to enter her apartment that Lucky, the most docile pup in the universe, didn’t attempt to savage the shoes of. She doesn’t think about how he’d looked in the sickly yellow over her overhead light, dripping wet and wrapped in the couch blanket, reserved for Bucky and his Off Days. She doesn’t think about how his hair had been all over her kitchen floor. She doesn’t think about the way it had been _easy_ to laugh and tease and joke with him, to be playful.

Tim calls. She ignores it the first three times, answers on the fourth.

‘Can I come over?’ he asks, after a few minutes of pleasantries and “how have you been” that makes her roll her eyes.

‘I’m at work,’ she says.

‘After, then,’ he huffs, and she gnaws at her lip.

‘I suppose so,’ she says, ‘I don’t have any plans.’

Nat eyeballs her over the top of her monitor. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she says.

‘Great,’ Tim says. ‘I’ll see you at – what time do you finish?’

‘Seven,’ she says, screwing her face up.

Her computer bleeps with an email from Nat.

> **From** : Natasha Romanoff
> 
> **Subject** : DON’T BE AN IDIOT
> 
>  
> 
> SAY NO SAY NO SAY NO SAY NO SAY NO

‘Seven. I’ll see you then.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you.’

Another email, external.

> **From** : Steven Rogers [sg.rogers@gmail.com]
> 
> **Subject** : WHAT
> 
>  
> 
> LAURA NO LAURA PLEASE LAURA JUST SAY NO SAY NO LET ME PUNCH HIM IN THE NOSE

Tim hangs up. Nat tells her that they’re staying late, she’ll find something for them to do. Laura puts her head on her keyboard, and accidentally sends Steve a reply of seventy Gs.

They stay until close to midnight. It’s balmy weather tonight, a cool breeze, but warm enough in the still air that Laura doesn’t need to do her jacket up. She pulls out of her shoes before she’s even in her apartment, carries them by their straps as she pads down the corridor, and finds a note jammed under her door. It’s from Tim, asking about his jacket. She takes a moment to read it twice as she pulls her key out to let herself in. The TVs on and she’s sure she didn’t leave it on when she left. Maybe Bucky’s over.

‘Hi, sweetheart,’ she calls, quiet, in case he’s asleep.

Clint appears in the arch leading to the hall, framed by the streetlight and the TV, and she swallows, clutches her keys before her brain catches up.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Hello. I wasn’t expecting to see you again.’

He rubs the back of his neck. His hair’s flat against his head, and it doesn’t look as nice as when it’s brushed back, gelled into a faux-hawk. She thinks she has some gel in her bathroom cabinet from when she’s done Bucky’s hair.

‘You’re late,’ he tells her. ‘I was waiting for you to get home.’

‘You’ve been watching me?’ she asks, and she can see his blush even in the shadows.

‘Kind of,’ he admits, and follows her to the kitchen, where she gets the milk pan down. ‘I was – I wanted to say thank you, for the jacket, and the haircut, and you know, not turning me in, ha-ha. But I chickened out.’

‘I don’t believe you chickened out of anything,’ she snorts. ‘Cocoa?’

‘Please. And I did chicken out. I was – I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me again. But then you were late home, and you left the window open again, so I thought. Well, I figured I’d wait it out inside, you know? Lucky seemed to enjoy the company.’

She leans to look into the lounge, where her traitorous Labrador is sprawled on the couch where he’d clearly been enjoying belly rubs.

‘Traitor,’ she calls to him, and he kicks his feet. Smiling, she looks back at Clint, who’s looking tired still, a quiet tiredness. Maybe he napped. ‘Did you nap?’

‘A little,’ he admits. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to get back so late, and that couch is really comfortable.’

‘If you want to sleep over, I don’t mind,’ she says, ‘You aren’t going to steal anything, are you?’

‘No,’ he says, and looks affronted, before he blushes darker. ‘Look, I know I kind of, you know, broke in the first time, and I did kind of break in again this time! I know that. But I’m not – I’m not going to steal from you. Promise.’

She eyes him. ‘You better not,’ she says, ‘I mean, I don’t have anything particularly valuable anyway. But still. Stay as long as you want, if you need to.’

He eyes her in turn, suspicious. But he’s still sleepy, so the suspicion is adorably weak, a childish pout and squinting eyes. It’s cute. Everything about him is cute, honestly.

‘You sure?’ he asks, and yawns.

Laughing, she measures out the milk and spoons powder into it.

‘I’m quite sure,’ she tells him.

They sit on the couch, a little too close, and drink their cocoa. Clint tells her that he only came in after he heard someone hammering on her door.

‘Was that that guy?’ he asks, gestures at the jacket he’s hung up on the hook where it had been originally. ‘The one with that jacket?’

‘Yeah,’ she sighs, ‘yeah. Yeah, he uh. I was supposed to let him come over, but my friend – she doesn’t like him much – she wouldn’t let me leave work. Hence why I was late home.’

Clint scratches his nose. She likes his nose almost as much as she likes the rest of his face. His eyes are definitely her favourite feature, though.

‘No decent guy knocks a door like that,’ he says.

‘I wouldn’t know, I didn’t hear him knock.’

‘It was too much knocking. I wanted to break in to open the door, but I thought better of it.’

She’s glad, really. Tim knows her favoured hang-outs with the gang. She’d rather not have a confrontation.

‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ she says, and downs the last of her cocoa. ‘Look, it’s late, I’m gonna turn in, will you be alright?’

He nods, pets Lucky, who’d briefly woken before going right back to sleep.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he tells her.

She fetches him a couple of blankets and the spare pillows from the bed anyway. If one of them is the one she usually sleeps on, well.

That doesn’t matter.

* * *

When she wakes up in the morning, it’s without Lucky and his doggy-breath blasting hot in her face. Just her alarm bleeping from the bedside table, and she groans, rolls over to flick it off. Rubbing her face, she swings out of bed and pads across the hall to the bathroom, pausing to glance at the couch.

Clint’s still there, face-first in the pillows with one leg on the floor and the other folded up under him, blankets tangled around his thin, but healthy enough frame, his dangling hand on Lucky’s head. She lingers, watching the rise and fall of his chest.

He’s beautiful like this, she thinks, and he sniffles, rolls over onto his back. Messy-haired and loose-limbed, he’s beautiful. Even if he does sleep with his mouth open.

Leaning on the wall to watch him in the dappled early-morning sunlight filtering through the blinds, she breathes deep for a second, presses a hand to the pounding heart in her chest.

‘Don’t you dare,’ she tells it, but it’s too late, because she’s already smiling.


	2. The One Where Laura Makes Some Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura makes some decisions, some of them are good, some of them are bad. All of them are questionable.

**Two Weeks Before Clint Breaks In**

‘Guys? This is Tim.’

Bucky’s smile, as it always is, is the first to slip. It’s hard to get him to smile these days, and Laura mourns the loss of it. Steve looks pleasant enough, and Nat has that normal look of vague disdain she has around most strangers. Sam looks the most amiable, so Laura starts with him.

‘That’s Sam, he works at the VA.’

‘Nice to meet you, man,’ he offers, and extends his hand across the table.

Tim hesitates, and then takes it. Laura sees Steve’s jaw tighten. Bucky’s fingers curl tight toward his palm. Nat takes a measured sip of her drink.

‘Nat works with me, I think I said?’

‘Pleasure,’ Tim says, in that kind of simpering tone Laura recognises well. ‘Laura says nice things about you. Never mentioned how pretty you were, though.’

Nat’s silent handshake makes his fingers white, and when she lets go, he rubs his hand as surreptitiously as he can.

‘That’s Steve, and that’s Bucky. They’re a package deal. Steve’s an artist, too.’

‘Too?’ Steve asks, and his smile is so sweet that Laura doesn’t trust it.

Bucky continues to stare. When Tim offers his hand, Bucky stares at it, and then flicks his gaze up, behind the newcomer to Laura. She knows that it’s the wrong hand for Bucky to shake. She knows.

‘Bucky, please,’ Laura mouths, gives him her best puppy eyes from behind Tim.

Bucky extends his hand.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I’ve only got the one. Lost it over in Iraq. Probably get it shipped home if they find it.’

Nat smirks, and Laura knows that this one’s a dud, too.

Steve nudges him with an elbow.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Tim, Laura’s said nice things.’

Laura hasn’t said a thing, and she takes her seat with regret already bleeding into her belly. After a moment’s fussing, Tim takes his seat next to her, and his hand immediately goes to her thigh under the table. She knows the gesture hasn’t gone unnoticed, and pours herself a bigger glass of wine from the bottle on the table than she probably would have.

‘So, Tim,’ Steve says, ‘Laura said you were an artist?’

They’re off, and Steve holds his own so well against the verbal onslaught, because Tim writes and draws his own comic books, and once, in the middle of a rant about some industry or another, Steve catches her eye.

‘I draw for comics too,’ Steve says, when Tim’s finally died down about the injustice of the industry. ‘I just finished a three-issue commission for a company, I forget the name.’

‘Dark Horse,’ Bucky offers.

‘DC,’ Sam corrects.

Steve wrinkles his nose. ‘No, no, Dark Horse was just after New Years, remember, I answered the phone when we were trying to finish off the eggnog from Christmas? And DC was over the summer, when I caught that chest infection. We thought I wouldn’t finish it, ‘cause I was coughing so bad.’

‘Marvel,’ Nat says, over the lip of her glass. ‘You got one of the _Secret Avengers_ storylines.’

Steve flushes. ‘Oh, gosh, yeah. Funny how it slips your mind, you know? I got a commission for a personal project to work on now, so everything before it’s all blurred together. I guess they liked my work. They’re from Iowa, I think, couple of kids. Their dad’s ill or something, want to give him a superhero comic featuring him. I’ve been working on character designs. Speaking of, Laura, will you look over them for me?’

She smiles and nods.

‘Of course I will. Bring them to dinner on Friday, and I’ll see what I can come up with.’

Tim looks at her. ‘You help?’

‘I’m the only one with any fashion taste,’ she replies, soft, teasing. ‘So whenever he designs costumes, he makes me look them over for any problems.’

‘That and she’s fixed more of our clothes than we, as grown men, should probably admit,’ Sam adds, and grins the grin Laura loves the most, all gap-tooth and starlight eyes. ‘She’s great, really. One of the best girls I’ve ever met. ’

She laughs. ‘Someone has to keep you boys alive, and Nat’s not going to do it.’

‘Damn right I’m not,’ Nat snorts from behind her beer, and offers Steve a wink when he looks offended.

‘But honestly, I’m not that great. I’m not a saint or anything; I just like babying these idiot boys.’

 Bucky looks like she’s slapped him. ‘If you aren’t great, I have both arms, you take that back.’

Laura laughs, embarrassed, and Nat explains that, ‘they care a lot about her. She’s a good girl. I doubt we’d be here as a group if it wasn’t for her. Really brings the gang together, you know, getting phone calls at three in the morning to make sure we’ve taken our meds because we didn’t take them at lunchtime.’

The last, directed to Steve, who looks off to the side as he takes a sip of his drink, sticking his fingers up around the glass.

‘Guys, please,’ Laura says, a little stiff, ‘I know you love it, but c’mon guys. Can we not turn this into the Laura Harcourt Appreciation Hour _again_? Please?’

She hates that they’ve been doing this for so long that these little bouts of praise (bragging, really, it’s bragging about her and how much she does for them, and this is _tame_ , compared to some of the things they crow when they’re trying to scare off her boyfriends) have their own name. She absolutely abhors it. But she’s been unable to stop them for five years; there’s no way she’s going to be able to stop them when they clearly don’t like her potential boyfriend.

‘More like Laura Harcourt Appreciation _Life_ ,’ Sam says.

That gets a low cheer from Steve and Bucky, and Nat raises her glass.

Tim looks at her for a second, and Laura stares at her glass, longing for the wine to refill it. She doesn’t even remember drinking it. But drink it she did.

‘You are pretty great,’ he says, ‘I mean, I don’t really know you that well yet, but you’re a good girl, aren’t you? Bet you never had a detention in school.’

‘Haha, yeah,’ she says, ‘always playing by the rules, that’s me.’

She feels Nat’s leg brush past hers, and Bucky flinches. Oh _God_.

‘So, Tim, where did you and our gal meet, anyway?’ Bucky asks, and he takes a long swig of beer. He says “our gal” the way he might say “my daughter.”

‘Oh,’ Laura says, trying to cut across Tim before his mouth opens. He’s by no means the _worst_ she’s brought to the table, but this is the worst reaction for a while. ‘We met on the Subway when I was coming back from visiting you.’

‘She said she’d been to visit friends in Brooklyn,’ Tim says, and shoots Laura a smile. ‘You’d been up all night, and I asked if she wanted someone to walk her home.’

‘You should have called me,’ Sam says, ‘I’ve been in the Manhattan centre all month; I’d have come meet you.’

Laura smiles. ‘It’s fine,’ she says, ‘it was light by the time I left their place, anyway.’

Nat turns to look at her, head doing that _thing_ it does that means Laura is in _trouble_. Honestly, you’d think she could never take care of herself.

‘What time did you go over there?’ she asks, nicely.

‘It was still light, Nat,’ Laura assures her, ‘don’t worry, I wasn’t out alone in the dark.’

‘I’d protect you,’ Tim offers.

‘She never goes out alone after dark,’ Steve says, ‘one of us is always with her to keep her safe.’

Tim’s nose wrinkles, and he opens his mouth. His hand is still on Laura’s thigh. She quickly reaches down to squeeze it, digging her nails in. He flinches, draws his hand away. Nat looks proud of her.

‘’Sides,’ Sam adds, ‘only time Laura ever needs to be out after dark is if she’s walking her dog. Otherwise, we all go to her place. Me and Bucky are trained soldiers, and Nat’s just Nat. She once choked a man out with her thighs.’

‘That and Laura’s apartment is the nicest,’ Steve says. ‘Movie nights on Laura’s couch are the undisputed _best_ movie nights.’

‘You’ll have to show me,’ Tim says, ‘one night.’

‘I don’t think there’s room,’ Bucky says. ‘It’s already a squeeze with us and the dog. Laura, have you eaten yet? We got here early, so we’ve ordered.’

Laura nods, ‘yeah, yeah, I could eat.’

Four hands immediately go into the air to call their server over. While she’s there, Bucky orders another beer, and Nat asks for another bottle of wine.

‘Laura’s favourite,’ she says, and Laura rolls her eyes, because it isn’t her favourite, and that’s mean.

‘That’s mean, Nat,’ she says, and puts a hand on Tim’s arm. ‘It’s not my favourite, ignore her, she’s teasing.’

‘Sutter Home,’ Sam chirps. ‘The pink one. It’s cheap enough even Bucky can afford to get her a bottle when he shows up in the middle of the night.’

‘She can drink it in one go,’ Steve adds, while Bucky throws a sullen stare in Sam’s direction, ‘it’s actually very impressive. She’s shorter than me, but she can hold her alcohol better.’

‘’Cause we have to keep stealin’ all your drinks,’ Bucky snorts, and ruffles Steve’s hair, apologising when he dislodges the hearing aid. ‘Funny how having only one hand knocks your balance off-centre.’

Tim is starting to look uncomfortable, and Laura is starting to feel a little glad about it. Maybe they’ll get to go home early and the gang won’t get to ruin this before it has any possible chance to continue. Laura’s not entirely certain she wants to continue it just yet, but just once, just once, she’d like the chance to decide it for herself.

He walks her home, after another three hours of beers and enormous sundaes Laura had had to share with him, and he admits that her friends are intimidating.

‘We’ve been together a long time,’ she says, ‘and we’re all really protective of Bucky, you know? He’s just come back from his tour and everything, so we don’t like throwing new people at him.’

‘Didn’t seem like he liked me all that much.’

‘Bucky doesn’t like people so much these days. I think he only sees me because I gave him a key.’

‘He’s got a key?’

‘Of course he does,’ she laughs, and steps over a crack in the path, stride extending longer than comfortable to make it over. She may have had one too many. ‘He likes my dog, and my apartment’s quiet, you know? It’s out of the way and he has free reign of the TV. Lucky likes him too, so that’s nice.’

‘Quiet, you say?’ Tim starts, and then hesitates. ‘Could – could I see?’

‘Why you wanna see a quiet place?’ she laughs. ‘It’s not much to look at, though. Got some nice art up in my room. One of Steve’s landscapes, from ‘fore he started doing comics. He drew a load of landscapes and stuff. Wouldn’t sell ‘em, so we got ‘em. Think Nat’s got most of them. Her place is huge, but super empty.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ he says, ‘the landscape.’

She thinks he’s full of shit. She almost says it. Instead she says, ‘you just wanna see my bed. I didn’t make it this morning. Probably got dog hair all over it.’

It probably still looks better than his bed, though. Hers has nice, matching sheets, even if they are covered in dog hair. His bed had been boring and a single and all around very unappealing to share. But she’d shared it anyway, because he’d been attractive, and nice and said all the right things, and he’d almost been _good_. She thinks she could probably teach him how to be good, rather than just mediocre. 

His arm goes around her waist, and slides a little too low over her hip for her liking. She steps away from him, twists out of his touch and staggers backwards a few steps, somehow making it look teasing.

‘Maybe on the third date,’ she says, and then kicks herself. ‘You can come in for coffee, though, sober up a bit before you go home.’

He’s going to be out by eleven at the latest, she tells herself, and has to physically turf him out when he refuses to go, citing drunkenness and the darkness and the streets.

‘Oh hush,’ she says, pushing playfully at his chest. ‘You’ll be _fine_ , and you can come over again sometime soon, alright? Maybe I’ll even let you see my bedroom.’

She knows that as soon as she tells Bucky how stupid she’s being, he’ll track Tim down and Laura will never have to worry about him calling her back. But she won’t tell Bucky how stupid she’s being, because that’s stupid, too.

‘Yeah?’ Tim leers, ‘that’d be nice.’

‘Well, get going, then,’ she leers back, and shoves him out of the door.

She shuts the door and locks it, and then groans at the jacket hung up on the hook opposite.

* * *

**Present Day**

Clint leaves after a breakfast of bacon and eggs and French toast, and Laura almost kisses him goodbye as he climbs out of the window. She touches his hand on the windowsill instead, tells him to stay safe. Their faces are very close, and he’s still leaning in towards her, as if gravity was pulling him in. She can count his eyelashes, and her heart flip-flops all over again. He has freckles on his nose, faint, but there.

‘Have you got a phone? I’ll give you my number.’

He shakes his head. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘haven’t got the money to buy one.’

She eyes him, and he flushes. He’s very adorably sweet when he blushes, and she squeezes his hand, shoves it out of the window to join the rest of him.

‘Be careful,’ she smiles, and shuts the window on him.

He waves at her through the glass, and disappears down the fire escape.

After showering and dressing, she heads to work, and tries not to think about how her heart hadn’t stopped beating hard until she left her block. Christ.

‘You’re looking pretty,’ Nat says, eyes her from the sign-in book.

‘Speak for yourself. Is Tony in today? You only wear skirts that tight when you’ve got Stark to stare at your ass.’

‘I have more than Stark to stare at me,’ Nat sniffs, handing the pen over. ‘And as far as I know, no, he’s not in today.’

As they stand in the elevator heading up to their floor, Laura tries to subtly look at herself in the mirror. She hadn’t thought she was overdressed today, a purple lacy blouse and black pencil skirt that’s not much different to what she normally wears. So her hair’s a little more curled than normal, that’s not a crime.

Nat catches her looking at herself.

‘I was teasing, but now I’m curious,’ she says, and leans to look over Laura’s shoulder.

It’s not fair that Nat wears heels too, because Laura’s still barely at Nat’s ear in her four-inch courts, and that’s _unreasonable_.

Dropping her chin onto Laura’s shoulder, Nat does that thing with her mouth where she’s very unhappy with something Laura’s done and is debating whether to tell her.

‘We both know you’re going to tell me off, so you might as well do it now.’

‘Are you seeing Tim after work?’

‘God, no.’

Nat eyes her some more. ‘Are you sure? You know I don’t like it when you lie.’

Laura rolls her eyes and reaches back to pinch Nat in her abs, which are far too tight and defined to be fair.

‘I’m not seeing him after work. ‘Sides, we’re at Bruce’s tonight, right?’

Nat pauses for half a second.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘did you bring a change of clothes?’

‘In my bag,’ Laura assures. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you by flashing my underwear to everyone.’

Nat heaves a sigh. ‘I can’t believe you did that. I cannot _believe_ you did that.’

The elevator pings open and releases them onto their floor. Jasper is waiting with dossiers for them, and they roll their eyes to the ceiling as they take them. It’s too much work for one day, and even with the whole team working on it, there’s no way.

‘I’m going to that class,’ Nat says as they go to their computers. ‘I don’t care; I’m going to that class.’

Laura agrees whole-heartedly.

* * *

Doctor Banner’s studio smells of camomile and mint and it’s  _wonderful_ , after the week they’ve had at the office. The boys haven’t come with them this time, Sam caught up at the VA, and Steve and Bucky feeling too miserable to come out. That’s fine, because Nat’s been funny all day, and Laura isn’t sure she wants their particular brand of teasing near her tonight.

Banner – Bruce, he’s forever telling them to call him Bruce, he’s not a professor here – welcomes them with a warm grin and call of, ‘evening, girls.’

Laura feels the weight drop from Nat’s shoulders, and she smiles more at her friend’s smile than she does in greeting. If Bruce notices, he doesn’t mind; he’s used to their antics.

‘You’re just in time,’ he says, ‘we were just about to begin.’

They drop their bags on the shelf, toe off their shoes, and hurry over to the two mats left.

It’s not something they do every evening, because they don’t have time, but at least once a week, they try to make it to one of Bruce’s classes, and they always stay for the free tea afterwards.

(Nat buys every blend he offers, even though Laura knows that she doesn’t drink any of them. They stay in their little boxes and sealed bags in a cupboard in her kitchen, and sometimes she looks at them. Laura suspects this is less a Russian thing and more a hopeless romantic thing. She never would have pegged Nat to be the sort to do something like collect international, unique blends of tea and stare at them instead of drinking them, but to each their own. She left her lounge window unlocked in case a would-be burglar returned, so she can’t really talk.)

Laura isn’t a big fan of yoga, not really flexible the way Nat is, but she likes listening to Bruce ramble on about whatever it is he’s decided he’s going to ramble about. He’s travelled all over the world in between terms at Culver, and he has such a gentle speaking voice that his stories, even when they get violent, or tense, it all goes down the same, like a child’s fairy tale. It’s nice, and if she pulls her calf muscle doing a lunge, well, that’s her own fault, she should have been paying more attention to what Nat was doing and not what Bruce was saying.

When class is over, Bruce asks who’s staying behind for tea, and Nat shoves Laura’s arm into the air hard enough that Laura feels her shoulder crack.

‘Nat,’ she groans, and rubs at the sore spot where her hand had gripped, a red handprint wrapped around her upper arm.

Bruce looks at her.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Nat pushed me,’ she says.

Nat gives her a filthy look. Bruce laughs, and Laura grins, smug. Nat’s look remains filthy, but softer, because Nat, so Laura has learnt, is _weak_ for Bruce’s laughter the way most women are weak for things like kittens. Nat is not most women. For the longest time, Laura would never have believed that something as simple as their yoga instructor’s laughter could make her ears go pink.

The adage isn’t “you learn something new every day” for no reason, she supposes.

Their tea for the night is from India, where Bruce worked for six months intermittently as a medical doctor and an interpreter. Nat is immediately there with questions about languages, and Laura tunes out, watches the steam curling from her cup. She thinks, idle and fond – fond beyond all reasonable measure – about Clint, about how he’d looked in the early morning sunlight, fast asleep and draped over her couch. She almost lets herself wonder what the curve of his back might have looked like if there hadn’t been a T-shirt in the way, about whether the freckles on his nose continued across his shoulders. She almost allows herself. But not quite.

Tea drunk and Nat in possession of a little card box, wrapped in cellophane with an intricate green pattern and delicate words denoting the name of the tea (and Bruce tells them what it translates to, but Laura doesn’t remember beyond the first thirty seconds), they put their shoes and coats on, and head out the door.

* * *

When she gets home, Clint isn’t there, and she stands in the doorway looking out over her silent apartment for several long seconds before sighing and kicking her shoes off. There’s no reason to  _expect_ Clint to be here, and she knows that she  _shouldn’t_ expect him, because if he was here, it would mean he’d broken in again, and you know, broken the law again.

Though, she ponders, yanking her T-shirt over her head and heading through to the bathroom to shower, does it class as breaking in if she’s inviting him?

It doesn’t bear thinking about she decides and scrubs at her scalp, watching shampoo suds pool between her toes. Clint’ll likely not come back now, will probably move on to a different part of the city. Maybe he’ll leave New York entirely, head out west somewhere, go to Chicago or Los Angeles or Tampa or wherever.

After she’s showered, she sits with a shitty romcom playing on the TV and paints her toenails, feeling sorry for herself. She knows it’s stupid to feel sorry for herself, because she has no right to feel sorry for herself, and yet here she is.

Her landline rings, but she ignores it, and two minutes later, her mobile starts buzzing from the table. Tim, the caller ID says, and she groans.

‘Hi,’ she says, putting something chipper into her voice that sounds like a broken printer chewing paper.

‘ _Hi_ ,’ Tim replies, and he sounds genuine, sounds happy to talk to her. ‘ _You at home_?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘I’m at Nat’s. Why?’

‘ _Oh, I’m outside_ ,’ he says, ‘ _your lights are on_.’

She suppresses a groan, and doesn’t go to the window to look.

‘Bucky must have gone over,’ she says, and examines her toes. ‘I’ll call him in a minute and see.’

There’s silence on the line for a few seconds.

‘ _When are you getting back from Nat’s_?’ he asks, ‘ _I thought we could go out, if it’s not too late_.’

Laura does groan at that, and says, ‘late, I’m afraid. We went to yoga class so I’ll be late home, and I’ll be going straight to bed.’

‘ _I could join you? Give your shoulders a rub_?’

‘Not if Bucky’s there, you can’t. He takes priority,’ she says, and wonders if Bucky would care that his Bad Days were being used as a cockblock.

Tim doesn’t like the sound of that, but Laura told him, she said as soon as they became a Thing, that if Bucky needed her, she would prioritise her soldier over her boyfriend, hands down. There was no contest. Tim had agreed, because Tim evidently felt he had no choice, but then he’s saying, ‘ _tomorrow, then_ ,’ like they’ve already agreed to it.

‘I suppose,’ she says, because it’ll shut him up, and she can find some excuse tomorrow to not go with him.

‘ _Great, I’ll see you at seven_?’

‘Sure. Bye, Tim.’

She hangs up before she hears him reply. As her phone screen goes dark, she stares at her reflection in it, and barks out a laugh.

‘What am I _doing_?’ she asks herself.

* * *

In the end, she finds an excuse to not see him. Clint doesn’t come by. Steve comes by with Bucky and Chinese take-out in tow, and they sit on the floor playing  _Monopoly_ .

Two weeks pass.

There’s no sign of Clint, and she catches herself looking out for that sandy faux-hawk and military surplus jacket everywhere she goes. Tim keeps asking her out, and she keeps denying or cutting out on him. Bucky comes over twice, and they nap on the couch, watching Jerry Springer and eating Doritos. They have their movie nights, and she takes Lucky for his evening walk.

A few times, they go to the Roadhouse, and Tim comes with them, inviting himself because he wants to spend time with Laura, and if he has to spend time with her friends, then so be it. They always end up back at his place, and he always gives her cab fare home. As he walks her home one night, Bucky having been complaining about Laura not being at home so Laura had promised to call him as soon as she got home, he professes that he doesn’t much like Sam or Steve, claims them to be too rude and too controlling of Laura, telling her that they’re trying to run her life by dictating what she can do.

‘Honestly!’ he crows, ‘not letting you out alone after dark! The city’s not _that_ unsafe, and you can look after yourself!’

‘They have my best interests at heart,’ she says, ‘they care a lot about me, because I care a lot about them.’

They have a row in the street, and Laura ends up apologising, because it’s her fault they had the argument in the first place. She apologises and Tim accepts, and the matter is dropped. He doesn’t try to stop her from seeing her friends, but he does keep inviting himself out with them. At least he seems to think better than to complain about Laura denying him dates and sex and conversations because she’s with Bucky. That might have been because Laura snapped at him, told him to come back to her with complaints after he’d been tortured by a terrorist organisation and lost a limb and wake screaming because he remembers having holes drilled in his head, and that had shut him up.

Though it doesn’t stop him complaining about it the rest of the time, and when he calls her at work to ask if they could go out in the second week, she begins to think that he’s only calling to ask her on dates because he wants sex.

* * *

‘I'm worried about Laura,’ Sam says and Nat hums while Steve and Bucky nod.

Laura is out with Tim, and they’ve congregated at the Roadhouse to have a serious Talk.

‘She’s been down,’ Steve says, ‘I haven’t seen her like this since she caught what’s-his-face cheating on her.’

‘Harvey,’ Nat replies. ‘He had to quit the company.’

At Sam’s sharp look, she holds her hands up.

‘Look, I had nothing to do with it! I promise! All I did was tell Stark why Laura wasn’t laughing at his jokes, and if he did anything with that information, that’s nothing to do with me.’

‘You got _Tony Stark_ to fire a guy because he cheated on Laura?’ Bucky asks, for clarification.

‘I have no control over what Tony Stark does,’ Nat sniffs, and turns back to her drink.

A beat, and then she says, ‘yes, I damn well did.’

(Stark had been seething when Nat had said, ‘Laura’s boyfriend cheated on her and she caught him.’ Nat had pondered at the time if legendary flirt Tony Stark had a bit of a crush on her, but she came to the conclusion that he just _liked_ her, the way they all _liked_ her. It was loving her without being in love with her, and she was deadly for it. Not a decent person in the world that Nat had met could meet her and not love her, clarification being necessary to distinguish all of the shit boyfriends Laura had had in the years Nat had known her.)

Content now, Bucky returns to his colouring page, left behind at their table from the family that had it before them. He’s only got red and blue crayons left, so he’s doing his best.

‘But seriously,’ Steve says, bringing the conversation back on track. ‘Something’s not right. I’ve tried asking her, but she won’t say anything. I don’t think she’s happy with Tim.’

‘Who’d be happy with him?’ Sam snorts, ‘the man’s every –ist word known to the English language.’

Nat hums. ‘She won’t dump him, though. She doesn’t want to be on her own.’

‘You think, or you know that for a fact?’ Steve asks.

‘I’ve known her longer than you. She was one of the first friends I made when I came here. I know her well enough to know that she doesn’t like being single.’

‘We aren’t enough?’

‘We’re too much,’ Nat replies. ‘She could easily spend the rest of her life devoted to keeping our collective shit together. Having a boyfriend forces her to have a life away from us. That’s what he is. He’s like our joint rebound.’

‘That sounds stupid,’ Bucky grunts.

Nat shrugs, shoves a chunk of bread in her mouth.

‘Saying what I see,’ she replies with a shrug, and sprays breadcrumbs everywhere.

Steve rolls his eyes ceiling-ward, but doesn’t protest. Nat is one in a million, and he wouldn’t change her for the world.

* * *

‘I think we should break up,’ Laura says, and Tim stares at her.

‘Sorry?’

‘I don’t think we’re working out.’

He’s walking her home after going to his; almost a month, and she’d managed to keep him out of her bedroom, and mostly out of her apartment. For the entire time, she’d told herself it was in case Bucky came over, and then in case Clint broke in, but really, she thinks that they were always going to end up here. She had no butterflies when she looked at him, had no flip-flopping heart, no curling toes when she kisses him. It’s not right, and she’d always known it wasn’t right, but he wanted to _try_.

‘Oh,’ he says, and stops in the middle of the street. She walks a few paces before she stops too and looks back. ‘Oh, right. I thought we were really good.’

‘Yeah, um. I don’t think we were. We, um. We aren’t that good.’

They aren’t good at all, really.

‘Oh. I thought the sex was good.’

‘There’s more to a relationship than sex,’ she says, ‘but even if it was, it wouldn’t be enough. I’m not happy. Please don’t make this harder on me than it is. You’re nice, and you’ll meet the right girl one day. I’m just not that girl.’

‘Right,’ Tim says. ‘Okay. Um. Right. I’ll finish walking you home. Then I guess we’re done.’

‘I guess we’re done.’

It went down a lot better than she’d been expecting it to, and she thanks him for walking her home, because that’s the nice thing to do. He seems to be okay with it, hurt sure, but he seems okay.

Then he calls her at three in the morning, drunk and calling her names. She lets him wail it out before apologising again and hanging up.

There’s still no sign of Clint.

* * *

It’s been almost a month without Clint appearing in her home, despite her having left him a note, clearly addressed, in a laminated envelope tied to the fire escape, to let her know if he stops by. For a couple of days at a time, she manages to not think about Clint, but she snaps back to him, and finds herself wishing he’d appear at the window again, even if it was just to tell her that he was leaving the city. She wants to see him again, wants to touch his face, his hair, his arms, and she hasn’t felt like this about any of the boyfriends she thought she’d loved. She certainly didn’t feel that way about Tim; hell, since breaking up with him almost a fortnight ago, she’s not thought about him at all.

She’s not _in love with him_. She’s not. She can’t be.

But she admits to herself that she could be.

Sitting alone in her apartment, staring at the wall, she decides that she needs to just – stop. She needs to stop thinking about Clint, stop thinking about what she can’t have from him, what she could want from him. She needs to stop thinking about asking him to move in the next time she sees him, asking him to stay, because that’s stupid. That’s stupid and dangerous and she’s not the one that does stupid and dangerous things. She’s always been safe, always picked men that could be vetted, always picked men that aren’t right for her because of how safe they were, how within the confines of their type they were.

Asking Clint to stay would be the stupidest thing she’s ever done.

So she does the next-stupid thing and calls Tim.

* * *

She considers telling Nat about it in the morning, but changes her mind. From the look Nat shoots her as they eat lunch, she suspects that the redhead knows Laura’s doing something stupid, but Laura is old enough to trip over her own feet, and Nat’ll help her up, but Laura’s mistakes are her own to make.

‘Whatever you’re doing,’ Nat says as they leave the office, something like concern on her face, and Laura has never been more uncomfortable than when Nat tries to be emotional, ‘be safe about it.’

‘I’m always safe,’ Laura replies.

Nat hums, disbelieving, but they go their separate ways, Nat heading back towards Harlem, and Laura back towards Hell’s Kitchen and through to her little corner of Manhattan.

There’s still no sign of Clint when she gets home, and she sighs, stomach twisting. It’s not right; she’s got a date. She has a _date_ , with her ex-boyfriend who might soon be her _boyfriend_ again. There’s no reason for her to be thinking about Clint, and certainly no reason to get butterflies thinking about the way he’d looked that last morning, leaning in as if he was going to kiss her.

‘Shit,’ she says to herself, and goes to change.

They go back to Tim’s apartment, because she’s tipsy and he talked her into it, and she thinks she should try to make another go of it, and his single bed is no better to share than it was the first few times. It’s – it’s _alright_. She’s had better sex, and she’s had _worse_ sex. It’s alright. Nothing special. It never was, and she doesn’t know why she expected it to have changed.

As soon as Tim’s finished, as soon as he’s pulling away, she’s scrambling for her clothes, dressing and hating how she feels. Dirty and sticky and sweaty and _gross_ , her skin burning, her stomach tight, because her mind had wandered – it had _wandered_ , and she’d thought about _Clint_ , and then it had almost been something _good_ , thinking about _his_ hands on her skin, _his_ mouth on her neck.

‘I need to go,’ she says, hurried, stumbling into her skirt, ‘this was a mistake, I shouldn’t have – this shouldn’t have happened.’

‘You’re drunk. I’ll walk you home,’ he offers, and she looks at him still lying on the bed and she’s made a _mistake_ , should have never slept with him the first time.

It should never have gotten as far as introducing him to her friends and she definitely shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have slept with him again.

Fuck.

‘No, it’s okay. I’m not drunk, I’m not that much of a lightweight,’ she says, ‘it’s not far, and I’ll call Nat.’

Tim frowns, but gets up to pull on his boxers and walk her to the door. The air is heavy; this is it. It’s done. They’re over for good, and they’ll never speak again.

He doesn’t give her a kiss goodbye, and she doesn’t ask for one.

As soon as she’s out of his building, she bursts into tears.

It’s only a few blocks to her place, so she forces herself to stop crying and just walk. Just get home, Laura, that’s what you need to do. Get home and cry then.

Her lights are on when she gets to her building, and she frowns. Which would be worse? Bucky or Clint? Bucky will kill Tim if he sees her like this, but Clint would – would – what would he think of her? Would he think anything at all?

She stands outside her door for almost a solid minute, trying to decide who she’d rather face right now, tear-streaked and messy-haired, stinking of sweat and sex. Bucky, she decides. It’s easy enough to talk him down from murder. She’s done it before. She’ll do it again.

The universe hates her.

Clint takes one look at her and stops what he’s doing.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, and tugs her inside, because she’s still standing in the open doorway without moving, and shuts the door.

It’s only when he brushes his fingers across her cheeks, cups her jaw to rub his thumbs that she realises she’s crying again.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ she admits, choked. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘ _Are you alright_?’ he repeats, harder, and his eyes are ice-blue like this, so intense, so hot, and he smells of her instant coffee.

She goes to shake her head, because she’s not okay, because she has _feelings_ for him, and she thinks it’d be easy to fall in love with him if she let herself, but she just fucked a man she broke up with a week ago, a man that was all-round actually pretty horrible, because she was missing _him_ , Clint, and that was stupid.

‘I’m fine,’ she says.

He’s still stroking her cheeks, still looking at her with so much intensity her stomach knots and her heart picks up double-time.

‘You’ll tell me if you’re not?’

She nods, because he looks like he cares.

He kisses her then, on the crease of her forehead, and she laughs, humourless, as he rests their foreheads together before straightening.

‘Go shower,’ he says, ‘you stink. I’ll – you’ve got some leftovers in the fridge, you hungry? I can heat them up if you want to eat.’

‘I’ll eat if you eat,’ she replies, and he laughs, rubs her cheeks again before letting her go.

‘I do hate it when you girls do that,’ he says, teasing, and flicks her nose. ‘Go on, get in the shower, I’ll get started on dinner.’

As they’re eating at the table, Laura looks at him, looking like he fits in the space, like he belongs at her table, and she feels her heart do that thing again. It does it every time she looks at him in these quiet moments, and she’s never felt it around Tim, and that means something. It means a lot of things.

His T-shirt is new, new-new and not new-to-her-new, and she doesn’t feel as put-out that he’s stealing as she probably should be. It suits him, purple. It’s a good colour on him. The military jacket is hung up on the hook by the door again, looking now like it belongs.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Clint asks, out of the blue. ‘About why you came home crying?’

Laura chews on her mouthful of pasta before swallowing and sighing.

‘I had sex,’ she says. ‘With Tim. He was, um – I broke up with him a week ago. But I, um. I slept with him. He, uh. It wasn’t great.’

‘Can’t have been,’ Clint says, light, but there’s a peculiar tightness in his expression, and Laura wonders if it’s too hopeful to think it might be jealousy. ‘If you came home crying. I thought sex was supposed to be, you know, pretty good.’

‘It wasn’t _bad_ ,’ Laura assures him, and wonders why she’s opening her mouth. ‘It just wasn’t great, you know? It was _average_.’

‘That sounds like a shame,’ Clint replies, and they lapse back into an awkward silence for the rest of the meal.

‘Are you staying the night?’ she asks later, as they sit on the couch, and it’s not right until she drapes her legs over his lap and his hand settles warm and comfortable on her knee, his other arm going around her shoulders.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘if you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all. I told you, stay as long as you want. Stay forever, if you like.’

He freezes. ‘What?’

‘Nothing. Never mind. I’m going to bed. I had a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, I’m still feeling a bit tipsy.’

‘Laura – ‘

‘I’m going to bed,’ she repeats, and frees herself, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll just go get you a couple of blankets, okay? I’ll be right back.’

He gets up to follow her, catches her arm, and she whips back around, but pauses before she yanks her arm free.

‘Laura,’ he starts, something tight in his eyes.

‘No, no don’t “Laura” me, don’t. It was stupid,’ she says in a rush, ‘of course you won’t stay forever, why would you? It’s not like it’s practical for you to stay or anything. Just – Clint, just stay. You want to stay, don’t you? You want to stay here, and not have to sleep in the cold and wet, right? They’re saying another storm’s on its way, and we’re going to get cold weather soon, and I don’t want you sleeping out there if you don’t have to. And you don’t have to, because you can stay here. I know it’s a stupid thing to suggest, and I know I’m rambling, I just – I really want to kiss you right now.’

Because he’s looking at her with that that ice-blue intensity again, and he’s so close she can feel him breathing, and his mouth’s half-open to try and talk over her, and her heart is hammering so hard she thinks she’s cracked a rib or three.

‘What?’ Clint asks, barely a whisper.

‘And I know it’s stupid!’ she crows, ‘it’s stupid to want to kiss you when I’ve just slept with my ex-boyfriend and you’re a thief breaking into my house to – to – why do you keep coming back?’

‘Laura?’

‘What.’

‘I’m going to kiss you now, okay? Don’t be weird about it.’

She feels all the tension leave her in a rush and then his hands are in the small of her back, lifting her a little so that he can kiss her, and she’s kissing him and it feels _right_. It’s _Princess Diaries_ levels of _right_ , all toe-curling, foot-popping True Love rightness, and she wraps her arms around his neck, presses as close as she can get, nauseas from all the butterflies in her belly and the tingle in her skin making her ticklish, but she keeps kissing him, and he keeps kissing her.

He drags her closer still, and they stumble, Laura’s toes barely brushing the floor and Clint not prepared to take her weight, and they’re close enough to the couch that Clint’s knees hit it and they tumble back, still kissing, only now they’re laughing too, a tangle of limbs and lips and this is better, this is so much better. There’s no strain in Laura’s calves, no pressure on Clint’s spine, and she kisses him until she can’t kiss him anymore.

 ‘Wow,’ he pants when she gives him his mouth back. ‘God, I should have kissed you the first time I saw you. _Christ_.’

‘What?’

‘I wanted to,’ he says, and brushes a hand through her hair, combs it back from her face and behind her shoulders. ‘I wanted to – shit, you are so out of my league. I didn’t think I had a chance. But then you were so fucking _nice_ , and you – you let me back in, you didn’t even question it, like having some would-be burglar breaking in and sleeping on your couch with your dog isn’t fucking weird! You just accepted it and you’re so okay with it, and you just – fucking hell.’

‘Then why did you come back?’ she asks, a whisper. ‘If you didn’t think you had a chance, why did you come back?’

‘Because I’ve always pressed my luck,’ he whispers back, and cups her face. ‘Don’t know when to quit. Always gettin’ into trouble, me.’

‘I can see that,’ she whispers, and she can; in this light, with him lying like this and flushed, she can see the edge of a yellow bruise on his cheek, and he flinches when she brushes it.

‘I got into a fight,’ he says, ‘it happens.’

‘Come to me if you get into any fights,’ she says, ‘I’m a trained first-aider, I can fix you up.’

‘Would you kiss it better?’ he asks.

‘If you were a good boy, I might,’ she says, and his smile burns. ‘That’s not an encouragement to get into fights. I have enough of that with Steve.’

Clint pauses then, head tilting. ‘Your friends are going to be – they aren’t going to like me.’

‘They don’t have to know,’ she says. ‘They don’t have to know a single thing.’

He frowns, but she’s kissing him some more, and he lets it go.

After a few minutes more of perfect, wonderful kisses, he pulls away and convinces Laura to go to bed, to sleep off the wine and be ready for work in the morning.

‘I’ll stay,’ he whispers as he walks her by the mouth into her bedroom. ‘I’ll stay and I’ll still be here when you get home. If you’ve got a spare key, I’ll even take Lucky out.’

‘I’ve got a spare key,’ she sighs, and she’s drifting, so he tucks her in, and when he makes to leave, she grabs his hand. ‘Stay. Bed’s big enough for us both.’

Clint shakes his head.

‘No, honey. Not tonight. I’ll stay on the couch. You want anything?’

She asks for water, and he fetches her a glass before he kisses her one last time and retreats to the couch to sleep off the warmth of her mouth pooling in his gut.


End file.
